Stan Lee knew he had a winner with Jack Kirby. So much so that Kirby's "in your face" style of storytelling would soon become the "house style" at Marvel. If Stan had had his way, Jolly Jack would've drawn every comic. The next best thing was to have Kirby act as an art director of sorts, and lay out each new series or strip until the artist doing finishes could ape him. The setup was simple: Kirby would guide the artist through the first few stories, then, as if removing the training wheels from a bicycle, would detach himself from the book and leave the other artist to their own devices.
Sometimes it was a seamless transition, other time not so much . . .
Which brings me to today's back issue dive: Tales to Astonish #73 from November of 1965. The main story here sees Bruce Banner, the incredible Hulk, manipulated by the nefarious Leader into aiding him in his bid for global, nay, UNIVERSAL conquest. As the story jets along in the usual break-neck Marvel fashion and The Leader's plan to use the Hulk bounds toward a crescendo, we are left to wonder who is actually using who.
(And the Watcher shows up, which is always cool.)
The plot is what it is. While exotic locales like the Leader's headquarters or the mysterious "blue area" of the moon might take the Green Goliath into fantastic territory and threaten to sap the humanity and relatability from the story, Lee keeps it grounded by putting us in the Hulk/Banner's head for the duration of the issue. His fears and doubts remind us that the Hulk is more like a mental condition than proper superpower, and while schoolyard kids might fantasize about thwipping from building to building as Spider-Man, being the Hulk is a curse.
The Leader was a villain I didn't really appreciate until recently. I like the simple flip on the gamma bomb concept; while Bruce Banner was burdened with a monstrous physique, the Leader was endowed with a giant brain. It's mind vs. matter in the mighty Marvel manner, and Stan draws these parallels several times throughout the issue, in case you're dense like me and need things explained.
(I huffed a lot of paint when I was little. Lay off, man!)
Jumping back to the art, Kirby's layouts are finished by an artist named Bob Powell. Bob Powell isn't a name you hear bandied about too much when fans talk about Silver Age Marvel, mostly because Powell was a holdover from the Golden Age. Powell's work in Cave Girl and horror titles like Crypt of Shadows is something to behold. His figures, with their distorted faces and sinister intentions, remind me of Steve Ditko's stressed characters. Just a personal point of reference . . . I'm not a proper art critic, that's for sure.
Bob Powell
Powell trying to incorporate his style onto Kirby's layouts is like trying to jam the square peg into the round hole. Kirby's figures want to leap off the page, but Powell's figures want to sink into the corner and shutter away from the anxieties of mortal danger. It's a contrast of styles and a conflict of interests.
Knowing what little I do about the art processes at this time, I have to rely on my imagination to fill in the blanks. I imagine Powell begrudgingly trying to apply his details and deformities to Kirby's wire frames and growing frustrated. But for all I know, Powell was just happy to be working or even interested in trying a new style. It does reek of, "No, do it this way!" in some spots.
Was Stan wrong in wanting to centralize the look of Marvel around Kirby's style? Was it oppressive for the artists who had their own way of going about thing? I'm left to wonder. No matter the trials, tribulations, and backstage drama, you could always count on Marvel at that time to churn out some satisfying superhero stories.
Thanks for reading!
Twitter: @ChrisBComics
E-Mail: backissuechris@gmail.com
More of my ramblings can be found here, here, here, and here!
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